Here’s Why Julie Kavner Boycotted the Only ‘Simpsons’ Episode Where Marge Doesn’t Speak

Marge Simpson is well-known in Springfield for taking moral stands, so it’s only fitting that her voice actor should do the same.

There are dozens of Simpsons episodes ranging from the Golden Age to the modern era that could be loosely summarized as, “Marge gets upset with everyone else in Springfield tolerating and embracing something distasteful and spends the entire runtime nagging her family about it.” In fact, most of the best Simpsons episodes ever have at least a little bit of Marge moralizing in them. “Marge vs. The Monorail,” “Bart After Dark” and “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” all jump to mind as classics that wouldn’t be complete without one of Marge’s famous lectures.

However, if Marge wasn’t there to push back against indecency and bad taste, the entire Simpsons family would devolve into awfulness — which is exactly why Julie Kavner put her foot down in 1993 when it came time to record her lines for “Krusty Gets Kancelled.” According to The Simpsons Season Four DVD commentary, Kavner refused to participate in the episode due to its overindulgence in needless celebrity cameos — and, judging by the Elon Musk episode, the Lady Gaga appearance and the groan-worthy Billie Eilish short that would eventually follow, the rest of The Simpsons crew should have listened.

In “Krusty Gets Kancelled,” a rising komedy star known as Gabbo the puppet competes directly with The Krusty the Clown Show in its own time slot, eventually beating out Springfield’s most colorful entertainer in the ratings and leading to the cancellation of Krusty’s show — even Itchy & Scratchy end up jumping ship to Gabbo. In order to save Krusty’s kareer, Bart and Lisa inspire the clown to stage a comeback show featuring his many celebrity friends, a group that included Johnny Carson, Hugh Hefner, Bette Midler, Luke Perry, Elizabeth Taylor, Barry White and every one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing themselves.

The Simpsons writers and producers deliberately hired as many A-listers as they could book for “Krusty Gets Kancelled” to follow up the success of the episode “Homer at the Bat,” in which many baseball superstars played themselves as ringers for Mr. Burns’ company softball team. Given the conflicting schedules of so many in-demand celebrities, many of the planned guest stars had to drop out of the episode at the last second, and The Simpsons almost had to scrap the entire comeback special sequence due to the no-shows.

Meanwhile, the committed, day-in, day-out, hard-working series regulars of The Simpsons took issue with their bosses making a mockery of the voice-acting profession by shamelessly snatching up as many big names as they could for brief performances. Both Kavner and Harry Shearer vocalized their displeasure with the stunt casting, and Kavner even opted to boycott the episode entirely, leaving Marge in the background of many shots in “Krusty Gets Kancelled” but completely and atypically silent for the first time in Simpsons history.

Now, 30 years later, it’s clear that Kavner had a point about The Simpsons selling its soul for celebrity cameos at the expense of the art itself. Maybe Springfield is better off without a house of burlesque, too.